SF - Berkeley

A longtime Ocean reader may remember how much trouble I sometimes go to just to catch a sunrise. I am in love with sunrises, even as I know most people find sunsets far more beautiful. For me, a sunset is melancholy. A sunrise brings with it an opportunity to face a new day with a smile.

This morning, I have, without question, the easiest sunrise capture of my entire life. I could have taken this photo (just before the sun cracked the horizon) from my bed.






I do get up, take two steps to the window and watch the most glorious day's beginning.






After, I crawl back into bed and contemplate the beauty of the mildly misty morning.

But not for long. I'm still on Wisconsin time. A sunrise at 6:30 here really feels like 8:30 to me and I am never in bed at that hour. Too, I can see how northern California really inserts that healthy living bug under your skin. I am to meet my Mom in the late morning. Shouldn't I use these early hours to do something invigorating? Perhaps join the hoards jogging or biking, or doing something equally energetic?

Oh! I live up to that challenge alright! After taking a large swig of the orange water in the hotel lobby (it's either that or cucumber water -- both always available; I asked if they believed cucumber water to be especially healthy - they answered that they were following the lead of spas and places that made a point of studying these things)...






...and I set out.  It is a glorious morning! Still nippy in the early hours, but absolutely dazzling!






I hug the shore and walk. And walk. And walk. Past the piers where the ferries come in, past seemingly deserted piers, too. Walk. All the way to Fisherman's Wharf -- a set of commercial amusements that I find significantly less interesting than New York's Coney Island and much more tacky than Boston's Faneuil Hall. Think: the hugest multistory Applebee's ever (among other dining pleasures) and Ripley's Believe It or Not.

It's a little tamer to be here in the early morning. And if you stray toward the water, you might catch the racket the seals are making here...






Or, you can gaze toward the foggy bay and contemplate Alcatraz.






Or, you can poke your nose into a warehouse of a crab distributor. Ship these to your friends back home!






I continue along the shore and up the path toward Fort Mason, where theoretically you could come face to face with the Golden Gate Bridge. But on this morning, like on many mornings, you have to accept the fog's domineering hold over the Bay.






And now it's time to turn back. I look at my little map. My, but it's a long walk back! And I still need my breakfast. And there's this pair of cheap sneakers I want to pick up off of Union Square and darn it, whose idea was it to put so many hills right in the center of this city?






I go up and down Russian Hill (with that crooked street that everyone loves to photograph)...






Then up and down the hill in North Beach and here I finally do pause for a far less expensive breakfast at a local cafe where, too, they still draw hearts and flowers in your coffee cup.






I have the local (organic!) yogurt and granola (also organic!) and berries along with my cappuccino.






Up Nob Hill, down Powell Street and finally to the sneaker store and now three hours into my walk, back to my hotel where I dump everything and quickly go back to the main drag where I catch the BART...






... to Berkeley.

Yes, Berkeley, where the cottages are so very interesting to look at and the flowers bloom profusely -- despite the drought (my Mom suggests that Berkeley has less of a drought problem than central California, though of course, all these regions are very interdependent).
















My Mom and I have a lot that we must discuss and review, but we still take time to visit a neighborhood to the south, where we do some minor strolling and window-shopping and where, too, we sit down to a Mediterranean salad lunch...






Back at her home, we talk, and we visit with her best pal too, and finally, as dusk brings again the cool air from the sea, she and I go to a local Italian place to eat a dinner that we've eaten several times before -- always the eggplant parmigiana dish for her, because the taste for it has stayed on her palate for a long long time.

I leave you with just one last photo of a flower we passed on our way to dinner: a jasmine, as fragrant as you could wish for on this lovely April evening. Yes, pungent with the aromas of another world, another time.

Berkeley

It's funny to be just a few hours off from your home time zone. You get caught in the confusion of when to call or write and, too, you get called at hours that are more fitting for that zone rather than this one. All this to say that I pushed the clock at both ends of the night, resulting in a significant reduction of sleep hours. I blame myself.

Though I am spending the morning in a frenzy of San Francisco activities, it is entirely appropriate to give a Berkeley title to the post, because my focus is on that place across the Bay, that progressive, university, hippie, free spirited town with a reputation that spans the globe.

But first thing's first. I pack my shoulder bag and check out of the great dame hotel off of Union Square and check into the quieter, gentler sister (also Kimpton) hotel -- the Harbor Court. Rooms that were not available a few weeks ago are suddenly available and at a discount. I am in luck: the hotel by the Bay has been a favorite retreat for me at the end of full days and it will be that again for the next two nights.

I also grab a light but not insignificant breakfast at the Blue Bottle. This (originally) Oakland coffee roaster has sprouted many offshoots here, but they give support to the notion that not all chains are noxious intruders onto the cafe scene.

I order my cappuccino, my organic yogurt (I'm in California) and home made granola and wait, looking at the Californians that appear to me to be so sweetly Californian.






The waiters here are friendly and they still bother to put that heart on your drink.

I eat outside. Glorious sunshine!






My computer is in my backpack to take to Berkeley, my change of clothing is in the shoulder bag to leave at the hotel. As I head for my changed hotel, I make a mental note of what's where. Hey, but where is my backpack, the one with the laptop in it?? Not on my back! I actually look over my shoulder to make sure. Oh hell, I left it behind. Underneath the outside cafe table.

If you know how many very poor, often homeless, and so often with mental illness people walk the streets of San Francisco these days, perhaps you'd worry along with me. And here I have to admit that this is one reason why I find San Francisco so troubling: it is so expensive. There is so much wealth in the Bay Area. How is it that we just step over the homeless and get accustomed to their presence at every corner?

I notice that people, local people do reach out in small ways. I've seen a young guy break his sandwich in half and hand a part over to a man who was drinking left over soda from a cup dug out of a garbage can. At the Blue Bottle, they gave baked goods to someone who asked for food. (Then they asked the beggar to please please not bother the customers.)

I run back the several blocks to the Blue Bottle. The backpack is there, unnoticed. The down and out people walk by, searching for the person who will reach into her purse just to have them move on.


My new hotel staff is ever helpful, I dump my sack of clothing and walk along the Bay shoreline, toward the Ferry Port and now very fashionable marketplace...






...turning in toward downtown (such breathtaking skyscrapers!)...






... where I catch the BART train to Berkeley.


Ah, Berkeley! If the Harbor Court Hotel's presence near the calm waters of the Bay soothed my soul, it was soothed twice over as I came out of the subway station and walked along the quiet, residential blocks toward my Mom's apartment in the senior center that has been her home now for so many years. I mean, look with me! Do you want to know what's blooming in Berkeley right now? Here you go!
















Beautiful clumps of flowers in front of very simple homes (that I know cost three times what you would pay anywhere else)!
















My Mom and I have things to take care of, but we have plenty of time for pleasure and guess what our first destination is? A children's clothing store in North Berkeley! My Mom has always generously clothed my girls as they were growing up (she sewed all their summer sundresses when they were little and later shopped grandly with them in preparation for the school year) and now, even on her most meager pension, she continues to find pleasure in searching for just the right outfit for Snowdrop!






We spend a beautiful hour looking at baby outfits and very earnestly comparing the virtues of one sweater and playsuit over another.


We are out in the sunshine again. It's lunchtime and I let my Mom take the lead in meal decisions and as she is reviewing the options, she points out that we are standing right in front of Chez Panisse and that maybe we should go there.

We had gone there before, years ago. With family. And just the two of us. Alice Waters, the proprietor, was the one who, many decades ago, gave me faith that there would be a food movement in this country in the direction of fresh and honest. I've heard her talk, I've studied her books, I've applauded her work on school lunch programs.

We go in. The wait isn't too long. The price -- well, if you pick just one item and have just one beverage, you wont quite need a lottery win to eat here.

We have a wonderful set of minutes (or was it hours?).






Back in her little studio, we attend to matters of her computer, of papers, of various thisis and thats and it isn't too long before the sun is very low and it is time for dinner -- this time in a very simple old Vietnamese restaurant, which she tells me had been here even in the years my Grandma lived in Berkeley.






The staff there recognize at once that my Mom and I are a mother daughter team. I make them guess my Mom's age. It's a great question, because it leads to the truthful admission that she is 91. No one believes it. This time, they bring staff from the back room to admire her from up close, as if she were an incarnation of some mystic forces (my Mom tells them -- exercise, it's all in the exercise; she is modest that way. It's not only the exercise).

I whisper my apologies to her for having created this fuss. She shrugs and tells me -- I'm used to the surprise.

I take the train to San Francisco, she takes the bus back to her apartment. She could take a cab -- Berkeley provides coupons for seniors -- but she tries to stay independent. She moves slowly, but surely.


In my new hotel room there are three windows. On one wall there is a mirror so that it actually looks like there are six windows. If you look outside, you see the bridge. I will always love this view for all that it does for those of us lucky enough to fall asleep in its presence.

travel

Travel disrupts the normal, but my normal includes so much travel that it becomes rather ordinary: I put on my travel mindset and, like listening to rather dull, inconsequential music, I go through the motions of packing a bag, eating a last fabulous breakfast (this part's not dull!)...






... tidying spaces and getting them ready for days of solo Ed use (yep, there's a difference!), going over lists of things that must be done, both in California and Wisconsin and finally riding to the airport with Ed, and catching the flights to Minneapolis, then San Francisco.

I leave a greening Wisconsin behind...






...cross this vast continent which, from the air, always feels even more vast...






...and arrive in the somewhat parched but green nonetheless California. It's rare that the incoming flight gives such gorgeous views of the Bay, but this time it does and I'm grateful for it.






I should mention that I am lucky, because an agent at the airport kindly agreed to put me on an earlier flight. I was to have no time in the city tonight, but now, instead, I have a late afternoon to roam the streets, in search of that, which makes San Francisco such a popular place, for locals and visitors from all over the world.

My own history with this city is very long. I have had family living in the Bay Area since I was very young and indeed, my grandma chose this to be her home for her senior years and my mother is following in those footsteps. I never saw this as a city to love or hate -- it's just the place where one American branch of my family chose to settle.

It is, of course, far nicer than many places where a parent might choose to retire, but it is distant from where I live and so a trip here is a major production. More major than, say, going to Chicago.

I'm staying at the Triton -- a very funky hotel just by Chinatown. All my recent San Francisco stays have been in hotels that form the Kimpton group and in this way I feel I am returning to a family of hotels.  Here's my room -- nicely in the corner, so with light. The wallpaper is a print of pages from a novel. I wonder if I would recognize it if I read it. After all, you wouldn't do a wallpaper of something obscure... Or would you?






In the (really funky) lobby, there are hula hoops. Just because.






I did not plan a walk or a destination and now, flush with more time, I consider the possibilities. Walk. Randomly. The park is too far, the obvious recommended destination -- Fishermans Wharf -- nah. So I walk the streets, which here are often steep...






...and I smile at the fact that California always meets your images of what California is like. You know, sunglasses.






And a love of the sun. Which appears to be always present.






Eventually, I cannot stand feeling so hungry anymore (it's been a while since that bowl of oatmeal) and so I look at the menus of the handful of recommended (by the desk clerks) fresh and honest eateries around me. Expensive.

I go to a Chinese place. After all, I'm hugging Chinatown.





I read the menu and retreat. The concept of fresh an honest -- so California, yet so elusive!  I'm getting in that fussy state where I am very hungry, but I don't want to make a mistake. (A mistake = spend too much money on food that's not good... It's surprisingly easy to do.) Finally I go back to a place that seems both simple and immensely popular. E & O Asian Kitchen. So much is it popular, that there's only one spot open and it's at the bar. Perfect! Even though I am a bit of an odd shoe here. I'm too old, too not California, too in love with the porch at the farmette and Pouic Pouic on the other side of the ocean. I'm not like her -- I'm not wearing a beautiful little black dress and if Ed were here, he would not be like him, behind her, with cufflinks clasped just so.






Still, I don't mind playing the outsider that I am. I order two appetizer dishes and a complicated drink that's fizzy and refreshing and one of the dishes is just superb and exactly what I need. (This one: with the shrimp the herbs the fruits the cucumbers the Asian flavors; the second one of chicken satays is fine if a tad boring.)





And then I drag myself back to the hotel. It is my 10 p.m. and their 8 p.m. and I still have a post to write and emails that deserve a response.

Except my funky hotel is having a funky problem: the internet is not working. I give them some time to diagnose the issue, but as the minutes drag on, it becomes clear that they haven't a clue and neither do the engineers and so it is time to tell them that this wont work for me: I have to check out.

It's handy then to be in a hotel group: there are sister hotels in town and one has rooms and yes, it will be the same price. But this new one, the Sir Frances or some Drake person -- it is so not my type of hotel! Larger, older, once glitzy now just tired (as I am). The hotel staff beam, thinking this to be an upgrade, as it's their flagship hotel, but I feel like I should use their functional internet to find another place tomorrow.

For now, I put off thinking about hotels and concentrate on writing. And I remind myself that the sunshine today was brilliant and this is nothing to sneeze at

San Francisco does know how to look at the bright side of the equation. And that's a good thing.

the day before

There is much in the air today at the farmhouse! Ed and I are planning a July excursion -- on his terms, so not to Europe and not comfortable! Add to it this: the weather today is superb, so there is yard trimming to attend to and most definitely a walk to fit in. I should admit, too, that Oreo supremely misbehaves by going after his best bud today (first time ever!) and so now I am making the calls that are required to relocate him, preferably to a place that has no humans within spittin' distance. To be accomplished soon, I hope.

And then there's Snowdrop who, as always, spends her Tuesday at the farmette.

And finally, I'm leaving tomorrow for a short trip to the west coast to spend time with my mom who, perhaps you recall, lives in the Berkeley.

You will forgive me then for this post. It's short. It's hurried. It's not as I would wish it to be. But, it's earnest.

Let's check off the highlights:

Breakfast!





The daily appearance of new crocuses -- many framing the bronze statuettes that were made by Ed's mom and that now are scattered in the different flower fields.






Then there is the appearance of Ms wonderfulness herself...






And now the hours are all about her -- her sweetness, her verbal precocity, her delightful antics! In mid-afternoon, I take her out for a very long stroller walk.

She just pretends to look resigned! In fact, she loves every minute of the excursion!






(While the truck farmers hand plow the fields around the farmette...)






We come home. Ed greets us, Snowdrop folds onto his shoulder...






In other words, life continues to be good to us.
Snowdrop is on board with that assessment.







Toward evening, she exhales.



(timed selfie)


The cheeper girls exhale...






And so do we.